An Ohio man is the first person to be convicted under the Trump administration’s Take It Down Act, a federal law that criminalizes posting nonconsensual explicit imagery, including AI-made deepfakes, the Justice Department announced Tuesday in a news release.
The man, 37-year-old James Strahler II, used AI to create nonconsensual images and videos of both adult and minor victims, the department said in the release. He was arrested in June 2025 and pleaded guilty Tuesday to cyberstalking, producing obscene visuals of child sexual abuse material and publishing digital forgeries — the law's term for deepfakes.
According to the release, Strahler used images of boys he knew in his community and morphed their faces onto the bodies of adults or other children to create material of them engaged in sex acts, specifically with their family members. Strahler posted over 700 images of people and animations online to a website dedicated to child sexual abuse, the release said.
On his phone, Strahler had 2,400 images and videos depicting nudity, violence or AI-generated child sexual abuse material, according to the DOJ release, and he had downloaded more than 24 AI platforms and over 100 web-based AI models.
Strahler had also sent messages to at least six adult female victims that contained both real and AI-generated nude images of them, the release said. Strahler created at least one AI-generated video depicting an adult victim engaging in sex acts with her father, which he then circulated to her co-workers, the release said.
“I am proud to have worked with Congress to provide U.S. Attorney Dominick S. Gerace II with a strong legal mechanism to protect innocent victims from cybercrimes of this nature,” first lady Melania Trump said in an emailed statement to NBC News.
President Donald Trump signed the Take It Down Act in May 2025. In addition to criminalizing nonconsensual intimate deepfakes, the federal law requires platforms to take down imagery 48 hours after it is reported. The act was spearheaded and widely advocated for by the first lady as part of her “Be Best” initiative. By next month, online platforms will have to establish a set process to remove from their platforms nonconsensual material that victims report.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a Wednesday media briefing that the conviction "is a huge achievement for the first lady" and that "the president is very proud of his wife’s efforts in getting this critical legislation passed to protect America’s youth."
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, introduced the bill in June 2024. It passed the Senate with a unanimous vote and, later, the House with a 409-2 vote. Those who violate the law can be subject to fines and up to two years in prison when there are adult victims and up to three years for minor victims.
The conviction comes after the issue of AI-generated child sexual abuse material has been building for years.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a child protection organization that operates the official online sexual exploitation tip line in the U.S., reported in a March 31 release that it had received more than 1.5 million tips related to generative AI and child sexual exploitation in 2025.
Aside from the Take It Down Act, Congress and state lawmakers are circulating bills and local legislation that attempt to further criminalize AI-generated child sexual abuse material.
In December, the Enhancing Necessary Federal Offenses Regarding Child Exploitation (ENFORCE) Act, which proposes prosecuting creators and distributors of AI-generated child sexual abuse material to the same degree as those who create non-AI-generated child sexual abuse material, passed the Senate unanimously. The bill has not yet made progress in the House. A tracker created by the watchdog group Public Citizen shows that at least 45 states have passed local laws related to AI deepfakes, some specifically tailored toward minors.
